The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and
Instruction, by Various

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Title: The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction
Volume 14, No. 392, Saturday, October 3, 1829.

Author: Various

Release Date: March 5, 2004 [EBook #11456]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE MIRROR OF LITERATURE, AMUSEMENT, AND INSTRUCTION.

VOL. XIV, NO. 392.] SATURDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1829. [PRICE 2d.

The Duke's Theatre, Dorset Gardens.

[Illustration: The Duke's Theatre, Dorset Gardens.]

The above theatre was erected in the year 1671, about a century after the
regular establishment of theatres in England. It rose in what may be
called the brazen age of the Drama, when the prosecutions of the Puritans
had just ceased, and legitimacy and licentiousness danced into the theatre
hand in hand. At the Restoration, the few players who had not fallen in
the wars or died of poverty, assembled under the banner of Sir William
Davenant, at the Red Bull Theatre. Rhodes, a bookseller, at the same time,
fitted up the Cockpit in Drury Lane, where he formed a company of entirely
new performers. This was in 1659, when Rhodes's two apprentices, Betterton
and Kynaston, were the stars. These companies afterwards united, and were
called the Duke's Company. About the same time, Killigrew, that eternal
caterer for good things, collected together a few of the old actors who
were honoured with the title of the "King's Company," or "His Majesty's
Servants," which distinction is preserved by the Drury Lane Company, to
the present day, and is inherited from Killigrew, who built and opened
the first theatre in Drury Lane, in 1663. In 1662, Sir William Davenant
obtained a patent for building "the Duke's Theatre," in Little Lincoln's
Inn Fields, which he opened with the play of "the Siege of Rhodes,"
written by himself. The above company performed here till 1671, when
another "Duke's Theatre." was built in Dorset Gardens,[1] by Sir
Christopher Wren, in a si